Dominika Slusna

I was born in Žiar nad Hronom, Slovakia and moved to Spain to pursue a BA in Modern Languages and Literature at the University of Granada with a specialization in Italian and Arabic. During my Master’s degree at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra I moved to the field of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Currently, I am pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Translation and Language Sciences at the same university (under the tutelage of Dr. Wolfram Hinzen) and working as a training researcher and seminar teacher with funding from the Generalitat de Catalunya (2018FI_B_00860).

My research taps into the link between language and cognition from a unique perspective of language-less children and adults, the majority of whom is diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Conditions. More specifically, I explore what is human cognition like when it never developed language (both productively and receptively). My current research studies investigate concept formation through gesture production and object categorization under lack of language.